Nepal Archive

Nepal Maoists call off airport blockade after world concern

Published: November 3, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Nov 3 – Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas, who have kept up a siege on parliament since May and Monday launched fresh street protests against the coalition government, finally capitulated to growing pressure from the international community and called off their proposed blockade of the airport next week.

The European Union, the US and Russia Tuesday sent their envoys to meet Maoist chairman and former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, to express serious concern about the planned demonstrations, the ‘risk of escalating tension’ and the proposed blockade of Nepal’s sole international airport on Nov 10.

The envoys underlined the ’significant damage’ the proposed closure of airport and obstruction of Nepal’s tourist infrastructure would do to Nepal’s reputation, particularly during the peak tourist season, and the ensuing damage to the country’s economy.

Heeding to the mounting world concern, the former guerrillas Tuesday said the airport blockade has been called off.

Prachanda also condemned a move by party cadres Monday to set up a parallel government in Dhankuta district, saying it was done against the party policy.

Nepal’s government has already condemned the move with government spokesman, Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, saying it violated the peace pact the Maoists had signed with the parties three years ago to end their civil war and return to mainstream politics.

The Western diplomats also asked Prachanda to reconsider the protest programme and instead use the Constituent Assembly, parliament and other peace process mechanisms to oppose the government.

They have also asked the ex-rebels to respect the safety and right to freedom of movement of the people of Nepal, foreign citizens, and of the representatives of diplomatic missions and international organisations.

The mounting fears come after Maoists cadres went on the rampage in Dhankuta, torching nine vehicles and triggering a retaliatory attack by the ruling party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML).

However, it was not certain immediately if the former rebels would go ahead with their plan to blockade Kathmandu valley Nov 10.

While there was no immediate reaction from Nepal’s immediate neighbour China, India is expected to make its view clear to the chief of Nepal’s ruling party, who Tuesday began a five-day visit to New Delhi.

Jhalanath Khanal, whose Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist is leading the current 22-party government in Nepal, will be holding talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, president of India’s ruling Congress party. India has expressed support for the present government of Nepal despite the Maoist demand for its dissolution.

Khanal will also hold consultations with India’s communist leaders, who are regarded as being close to the Nepal Maoists, like Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India-Marxist. The communist leader will consult India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leaders as well.

Khanal was invited by the Indian government, his party said. Nepal’s communist-headed government is grappling with fresh Maoist protests that started Sunday.

The Maoists are demanding an apology from President Ram Baran Yadav, who they say acted unconstitutionally when he reinstated the chief of the army, Gen Rookmangud Katawal, whom they (Maoists) had sacked.

Indian help sought as Nepal refuses to ban ritual slaughter

Published: November 3, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Nov 3 – A group of Buddhists from Nepal as well as animal rights organisations have begun urging India’s state administrations and animal welfare organisations to help prevent the slaughter of thousands of birds and animals as Nepal’s government said it would not ban a Hindu festival in the Terai plains for fear of ruffling religious sentiments.

‘We have asked the administration of India’s Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states, which border Nepal, as well as other bordering Indian states to prevent the smuggling of animals and birds from India to Nepal with the intention of slaughtering them at the Gadhimai Fair,’ said D.B. Bomjan, chairman of the Tamang Rastriya Mukti Morcha, an NGO from an indigenous community that is Buddhist by religion.

Bomjan said that Nepal’s animal rights organisations have also asked their counterparts in India to help create mass awareness and stop hundreds of Hindus from travelling to Nepal’s Bara district across the border at the end of this month to take part in a religious festival they are describing as the ‘largest animal killing fields in the world’.

The plea came after Nepal’s communist-led coalition government declined to intervene in the festival at the Gadhimai Temple in Bara, scheduled to start from Nov 24.

The festival, held once in five years, has grown in notoriety due to the growing mass animal slaughter at the altar of the goddess. This year, the organisers of the festival say about 500,000 birds and animals will be killed.

Though former Indian minister and noted animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi wrote to Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, urging the government to intervene, the spokesman of the government said the state would not use force as it was a sensitive issue.

‘We do not plan to use force to prevent the sacrifices,’ said Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, who is also the government spokesman.

‘It is a sensitive issue and we don’t want to hurt religious sentiments.’

Bomjan said that in the past, human sacrifices were also considered to be essential for Hindu festivals. But they had been stopped.

‘We also used to burn widows on the pyres of their husbands as part of tradition,’ he said. ‘But didn’t we end that atrocity?’

However, the response from Nepal’s major political parties – which three years ago abolished Hinduism as the state religion and last year ousted the royal family to turn the Himalayan kingdom into a republic – has been extremely lukewarm, Bomjan said.

‘We invited them to discussions to chalk out alternatives to the sacrifices,’ he said. ‘But they haven’t responded.’

A few of them had indicated that they did not want to go against prevailing religious sentiments, Bomjan said.

The Buddhist community is pinning its hopes on Nepal’s ‘Buddha Boy’.

Ram Bahadur Bomjan, who shot to fame nearly five years ago when he started meditating in a remote forest in the Terai for world peace, has been campaigning in the nearby villages to stop sacrificing animals in the name of religion.

Bomjan said the teenaged wonder, who commands widespread respect and devotion from Buddhists and Hindus alike, will go to the village where the Gadhimai temple is located, on Nov 20, four days before the killings start, to make an appeal.

The Gadhimai killings are condemned as the world’s greatest wanton cruelty of animals and are a severe danger to the environment and public health.

In the past, two animal-borne diseases entered Nepal during the fair and this time, livestock experts are fearing the spread of bird and swine flu.

The slaughtered animals are not eaten but the carcasses are left in the open while rivers of blood drench the fields.

Nepal leader to seek India’s advice as Maoists cripple government

Published: November 3, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Nov 3 – The chief of Nepal’s ruling party is heading for New Delhi on a week-long visit Tuesday for consultations with Indian leaders after the republic’s political parties failed to persuade the former Maoist guerrillas to call off their protests, which have crippled the government.

Jhalanath Khanal, whose Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist is leading the current 22-party government in Nepal, will be holding talks in the Indian capital with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, president of India’s ruling Congress party, who have expressed support for the present government of Nepal, despite the Maoists’ demand for its dissolution.

Khanal will also hold consultations with India’s communist leaders, who are regarded as being close to the Nepal Maoists, like Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The communist leader will consult India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leaders as well and is scheduled to hold a meeting with its chief Rajnath Singh.

Khanal was invited by the Indian government, his party said.

Nepal’s communist-headed government is grappling with fresh Maoist protests that started Sunday.

On Tuesday, the former rebels continued picketing village administration and municipal offices nationwide bringing the work of the government to a standstill.

They have also vowed to blockade Kathmandu valley Nov 10 when they have threatened to prevent all flights to and from the country’s only international airport.

Alongside the street protests, the Maoists, who are also the largest party in parliament, have kept up a siege of the house since May, when their short-lived government collapsed.

The parliament blockade has made it impossible for the government to pass the budget, triggering a financial crisis.

Civil servants and security forces have not received pay since last month while the finance ministry said Nepal’s prisons and hospitals were running out of food and medicine.

Food scarcity has also been reported from the remote districts.

The Maoists are demanding an apology from President Ram Baran Yadav, who they say acted unconstitutionally when he reinstated the chief of the army, Gen Rookmangud Katawal, whom they had sacked.

Besides protests by the Maoists, the government is also under pressure from a former ally.

The Madhesi Janadhikar Forum, once the largest party in the southern Terai plains and an ally of the government, is now split into two over supporting the ruling alliance.

Former foreign minister Upendra Yadav, who heads a faction of the party, has asked the government to give the Hindi language the status of state language and reinstate Vice-President Parmananda Jha, who has been suspended for taking his oath of office in Hindi.

Yadav is also leaving for Delhi Tuesday for talks with Indian leaders.

The Maoists have already begun criticising Khanal’s India visit, saying it proved the government was a puppet propped up by India.

Children in rural Nepal discover magic of www

Published: November 3, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Pokhara (Nepal), Nov 3 – Ask them the capital of Belgium and each of the 25 students, bubbling with excitement, clicks away on Google search. Within seconds, uncertain only of the pronunciation, they cry as if in unison, ‘Brussels!’ They are Class 9 students in Jaljale village of central Nepal.

Until a week ago, the concept of a computer was alien to them. ‘It looked like a TV at first,’ said Archana, one of the students.

But Archana is already adept at video chatting and her peer Safal calculates how much his father earns in US dollars – thanks to high speed internet availability at the new wireless computer lab in their government-run Amar Jyoti Gaunpharka Secondary School in Pokhara district.

Their quest for knowledge using the world wide web (www) has only just begun. ‘I love using the computer. My grandparents send me to school with a lot of difficulty. I want to become a teacher some day,’ Archana told visiting journalists.

The lab was established as part of a project involving the local community, the education department, Nepal Telecom and NGO Room to Read. In the tough terrain where landline connectivity often fails, the lab has 3G CDMA broadband internet connectivity provided by chip manufacturer Qualcomm.

As part of this project, four more wireless labs were established last week in the Kaski and Kavre regions of Nepal and six labs in Can Tho Province of southern Vietnam.

Damodar Sapkotia, headmaster of the school, said: ‘We are extremely glad and thankful that this lab was established. We feel privileged that we are one of the first schools in the country where an innovative idea of using technology for furthering education is being implemented.’

In addition to providing training to students about basic computer skills, each lab will also use technology to teach other subjects like English, maths and science.

‘Access to online resources and educational materials can have a life-changing impact on students. Not only will they have connectivity that enables access to learning materials and communities for the first time, they will also have the opportunity to gain specialised skills and training,’ said Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm.

Former Microsoft executive and Room to Read’s founder John Wood said the project was all about providing opportunity.

‘We want to give opportunities to children whose families face a cruel paradox – they are too poor to afford an education, but unless they have it they will always be poor. Now with the addition of technology and the internet, these children will have access to a whole new world,’ Wood told IANS.

He came backpacking to Nepal around 10 years ago and that’s when he came across a school with barely any infrastructure. What struck him was that there were no books in the library.

‘The principal told me that if I was so concerned I should bring the books. On my next visit that’s exactly what I did – now Room to Read has established 750 schools and 7,000 libraries across the developing world,’ Wood stressed.

He added that to sustain the project, the computer labs had to involve the community who foot 20 percent of the set-up and maintenance cost. ‘They need to feel they own the lab to use it.’

At the Amar Jyoti Gaunpharka Secondary School, residents of the nearby area, students and parents contributed Nepali Rs.322,436 for the lab and the computer lab maintenance committee, after setting up the lab with a teacher, managed to save Nepali Rs.85,953.

As many as 10,000 of the 30,000 government-run secondary schools in Nepal are run by a community-government partnership.

Although the computer lab is in its pilot stage which would last three years, the government is quite hopeful of replicating the project on a much larger scale eventually.

‘The government is not capable of sustaining such initiatives alone. So it is good that the people are themselves involved. I am happy that in this age young kids are getting equipped with new technology. These schools piloting the project have set an example for the rest of the country,’ Dipendra Bikram Thapa, Nepal’s education secretary, told IANS.

(Shweta Srinivasan can be contacted at shweta.s@ians.in)

Nepal Maoists fail to disrupt opening of India-aided polytechnic

Published: November 2, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Nov 2 – Nepal’s Maoist party, set on a collision course with the government, Monday failed to disrupt the opening of an India-aided polytechnic institute in the east by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal.

Nepal flew to Biratnagar city in Morang district to inaugurate the Manmohan Memorial Polytechnic established with an Indian assistance of NRS 460 million.

India had agreed in 2003 to help build the institute named after Manmohan Adhikari, Nepal’s first communist prime minister.

Though earlier scheduled to be completed in two years, the project was delayed due to the political turmoil in Nepal.

Established under the India-Nepal Economic Cooperation Programme, the polytechnic, the first of its kind in Nepal, is affiliated to the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training and will offer three years diploma courses in Electronics, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering to fill the gap of middle level human resources and expertise in the field of engineering.

The project, intended to contribute towards the growth and industrial development of Nepal, was executed on a turn-key basis with an outlay of about NRS 460 million. India will also provide Indian experts under faculty support to the polytechnic for five years. The polytechnic is expected to produce its own experts during this period to take over the complete running of the institution.

While on his way to inaugurate the polytechnic, Nepal’s motorcade ran into Maoist demonstrators who have begun a series of protests demanding the dissolution of the Nepal government and the formation of a new one under them.

As the demonstrators tried to show black flags to the prime minister, there was a scuffle between them and members of Nepal’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, resulting in two protesters being injured.

The Indian ambassador to Nepal, Rakesh Sood, inaugurated the approach road from the highway to the polytechnic.

The road, also constructed with an Indian assistance of NRS 19 million, will benefit about 200,000 locals.

The inauguration of the institute was followed by a presentation before local chambers of commerce and industry gauge the expectations of the local industry.

Indian pilgrim killed in Nepal religious fair stampede

Published: November 2, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Nov 2 – An Indian pilgrim was among the two people killed while nearly two dozen were injured in a stampede in southern Nepal Monday during a Hindu religious festival.

Laxman Shah from Supaul district in India’s Bihar state, said to be in his 50s, was crushed to death while a pilgrim in his 70s, Dev Narayan Yadav from Saptari district in Nepal, drowned after the wooden bridge over a river collapsed due to overcrowding, police said.

At least 23 people received injuries during the stampede in the Haribodhini Fair in Sunsari district in the Terai plains.

Nearly 300,000 Hindu devotees from the Terai as well as Indian states across the border have been gathering at Sunsari to attend the five-day fair.

However, they alleged to the media that only around 50 policemen had been deployed in the area.

The stampede occurred when dozens of people climbed on the bridge, causing it to collapse.

Shah died in the stampede as panic-stricken people trampled over others to reach safety.

Two months ago, 24 people died in a church collapse in the same district, including an Indian from West Bengal.

Hundreds of Christians from Nepal and India had gathered at the Zion Prayer Hall in Sunsari for an annual get-together and the makeshift three-storeyed bamboo structure built to accommodate them collapsed at night.

Nita Rai, an Indian from Siliguri town, was among those who were killed.

Nepal government rules out imposing emergency, deploying army

Published: November 2, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Nov 2 – As Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas Monday stepped up their protests against the ruling alliance, asking for its dissolution, the government said it was not planning to deploy the army to crack down on the protesters or declare a state of emergency.

Thousands of Maoist supporters, led by their former ministers and lawmakers, began picketing village administration and municipal offices across all the 75 districts, preventing people from going in or coming out.

Waving the red star-spangled flag of the party with similar bandanas tied round their heads, young cadres turned the protest into a carnival in the capital, breaking out into jigs and shouting slogans lustily against President Ram Baran Yadav, who is the main target of the protests.

While the government beefed up the deployment of armed police forces in Kathmandu valley and near key government offices in the outer districts to prevent vandalisation, the protests remained peaceful even on the second day with the security personnel watching impassively.

‘We respect peaceful protests,’ Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, who is also the spokesman of the 22-party government, told IANS in an exclusive interview.

‘Though the home ministry has been instructed to deploy security agencies to pre-empt violence and destruction of public or state property, the army will not be deployed.’

The spokesman also ruled out imposing a state of emergency.

However, he said that the former insurgents would not be allowed to execute their threat to lay a blockade to Kathmandu valley and Nepal’s sole international airport Nov 10.

‘The blockade goes against democratic norms and smacks of the tactics the Maoists used during the civil war,’ the minister said.

‘However, when they signed a comprehensive peace agreement in 2006 (and ended the insurgency), they agreed to end such un-democratic means.’

Pokhrel did not rule out the possibility of violence during the protests that will continue till Nov 13.

‘If you look at the nature of past Maoist protests, they indicate a lapse into violence,’ he said. ‘Even when they announced a programme of showing black flags to ministers, there were more brickbats than black flags.’

Close on the heels of Pokhrel’s statement, police said two Maoist cadres had been injured in a scuffle in Biratnagar city in eastern Nepal.

The skirmish occurred after Maoist cadres showed black flags to Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who had gone there to inaugurate a polytechnic.

The Maoists are demanding an apology from the president for reinstating the chief of the army, whom they had sacked during their eight-month government.

The reinstatement caused the fall of the Maoist government with its allies withdrawing support.

Else, they are asking the government to allow a debate in parliament on the ‘unconstitutional’ role played by the president, a proposal that has been rejected.

‘An agreement can’t be one-sided,’ Pokhrel said. ‘If the Maoists stick to their stand and don’t admit their mistakes, how can there be a consensus?’

Nepal, China to sign pact to save the tiger

Published: October 25, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Oct 25 – Concerned at the spurt in the smuggling of rare animal organs and skins to China and India via Nepal, the coalition government of Nepal is pressing China to sign an agreement in a bid to jointly man the common border and curb the menace.

‘We have forwarded a draft of the memorandum of understanding to the Chinese government and are hoping it will be signed in November,’ said Nepal’s Forest Minister Deepak Bohra, ahead of a key meeting on tiger conservation to be held in Kathmandu from Tuesday.

China, which farms tigers for commercial use, is also the world’s biggest consumer of tiger organs, which are believed by the Chinese to have medicinal and aphrodisiac powers.

Two years ago, at another international meet in Kathmandu to discuss strategies by countries with wild tigers on how to protect and increase their numbers, Chinese tiger farm representatives had been lobbying for the lifting of the 1993 international ban on trade in tiger parts.

Though the ban still remains, it is expected that at the four-day Global Tiger Workshop 2009 in Kathmandu, which will be attended by over 200 participants comprising policy and decision-makers, scientists, conservationists from all the tiger range countries, partner organisations and individuals, China will renew the lobby.

‘The MoU discussed between Nepal and China is a welcome step in the conservation of endangered wildlife,’ said Ghanshyam Gurung of the World Wildlife Fund. ‘In the past, China had been refusing to acknowledge at all that there was a trade in banned animal organs. Now it is ready to talk about it.’

The smuggling network extends from India to China with Darchula in farwestern Nepal increasingly becoming the border point used by poachers.

Nepal plans to discuss strategies with China to step up joint vigilance along the northern border it shares with China-held Tibet, share information between the security agencies of both countries and train security, customs and forest officials for regular monitoring.

Though Nepal also has a similar pact with its southern neighbour India, it has been rusting due to political changes in both countries.

While forest officials are scheduled to hold meetings every two years to assess the situation and improve the existing vigilance, such a meeting has not been held for several years.

Bohra told IANS that Nepal is also seeking a similar pact with Thailand.

Besides government-to-government interactions, Nepal is also focusing on raising social awareness, especially through the media.

‘The actual poacher gets a fraction of the money killing a tiger,’ Bohra said. ‘Poaching is also linked with poverty and we need to address that too.’

The key partners of the workshop include CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) Secretariat, Global Tiger Forum, Global Tiger Initiative, World Bank, Save the Tiger Fund, National Trust for Nature Conservation and WWF Nepal.

The main goal of the four-day workshop, to be inaugurated by Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, is to define strategic actions to save the wild tiger from extinction.

The experts will assess the present situation, challenges and strategies for wild tiger conservation and identify the most urgent needs and priority actions to be implemented.

It is also looking at generating agreements among the tiger range countries on effective monitoring indicators for conservation and management of tigers, prey and habitat including trans-boundary cooperation requirements.

The Global Tiger Workshop will be followed by a conference of forest ministers from Asian countries to be held in Thailand in January 2010.

Mounting concern in UN Security Council over Nepal stalemate

Published: October 23, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Oct 23 – For the first time since 2006, when Nepal’s Maoist guerrillas signed a peace pact and confined their ‘People’s Liberation Army’ (PLA) to makeshift barracks, the UN Security Council Friday sent representatives to visit the combatants, marking mounting concern in the world forum at the political stalemate in the Himalayan republic.

The heads of the embassies of China, France, Russia, Britain and the US, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and of Japan visited the Maoist army cantonment at Chulachuli in eastern Ilam district to evaluate progress on implementation of the peace agreements, including the integration and rehabilitation of the PLA.

The envoys also inspected the Nepal Army arsenal in Chhauni in the capital, where, as part of the peace pact, the state army has laid down its weapons under UN supervision.

The visit reflects the Security Council’s mounting concern that the proposed merger of the PLA with the state army as well as the discharge of the Maoists’ child soldiers and other illegally recruited fighters is yet to start, even three years after the civil war ended.

The concern has been deepened by the fact that the UN agency mandated to monitor the Maoist and the state army, the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), will end its tenure in January 2010.

UNMIN’s stay in Nepal has been protracted due to the peace negotiations coming to a standstill and after several extensions, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his desire to withdraw UNMIN after Jan 23, 2010.

Though Nepal’s new government said the PLA child soldiers would be discharged by November, it seems to be impossible with the former rebels Friday setting a Nov 1 ultimatum for the government.

The Maoists are asking the government to meet their demands by Nov 1 or face nationwide protests, including a civil disobedience movement calculated to bring the government on its knees.

The UN Security Council will be meeting in New York next month to discuss the Nepal situation and the UNMIN mandate Nov 6.

The ambassadors are asking the Nepal government to create a unified approach among the political parties and begin the process of discharge, integration and rehabilitation of the PLA so that the UNMIN can be winded up by Jan 23, 2010.

Maoists extend ultimatum to Nepal government

Published: October 23, 2009Posted in: NepalTags:

Kathmandu, Oct 23 – Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas Friday extended the 24-hour ultimatum they had slapped on the coalition government, saying they would start fresh protests if their demands were not addressed by Nov 1.

The central committee of the formerly outlawed party began a council of war at the party office in Kathmandu Friday to finalise a new protest movement that would include encircling government offices and a civil disobedience movement, according to Narayan Kaji Shrestha, the deputy chief of the party.

‘Our party chairman Prachanda proposed that the government be given till Nov 1 to create a conducive atmosphere for arriving at a consensus,’ Maoist lawmaker and spokesman Dinanath Sharma told the media after the meeting ended.

‘If we find the government is not serious about addressing the unconstitutional step taken by the president (Ram Baran Yadav) or ready to pledge civilian supremacy (above the military), we will start a vigorous movement,’ Sharma said.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal Friday called a meeting of his council of ministers to formulate the government’s strategy, especially how to tackle the looming financial crisis.

The Maoist protests started since May, when the Prachanda government tried to sack its arch enemy, then chief of the army, Gen Rookmangud Katawal.

The fired general was reinstated by the president, leading to the collapse of the eight-month Maoist government.

Since then, the former insurgents have been seeking to censure the president, calling his role unconstitutional and seeking a debate on his move in parliament.

With the ruling parties refusing to admit the debate, the former guerrillas in retaliation have laid a siege to parliament, not allowing it to sit.

The blockade has prevented the government from passing the budget for the current financial year, leading to a dire financial crisis.

From the current Nepali month, all government salaries have been stopped due to the paucity of funds. Finance Minister Surendra Nath Pandey Thursday appealed to the former rebels to allow the budget to be passed.

The growing crisis has been further fuelled by manoeuvres by Defence Minister Bidya Bhandari to push for fresh recruitment in the army.

The bid goes against the peace pact signed between the parties and the Maoists in 2006 that saw an end to the 10-year-old civil war claiming over 16,000 lives.

In the pact, both sides pledged to stop recruitment or buy new arms.

However, both sides have flouted the pledge with impunity.

Bhandari recently asked parliament to revise the peace pact, saying the recruitment freeze was hindering the army from carrying out its responsibilities.

It lead to the chief of the UN agency that is monitoring the truce in Nepal, Karin Landgren, to meet the prime minister Thursday, conveying concern at Bhandari’s statements. Landgren said Bhandari’s statements were provocative and could affect the peace negotiations.

Though the government distanced itself from the defence minister, saying her statement was not supported by the parties, the minister’s action has raised concerns about the rise of a third force, which is inimical to peace and democracy, and trying to bolster the army to trigger a new confrontation with the Maoists.